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Answering the Age-Old Question: 'Why Do People Need to be In-Office to Help Customers Over the Phone?'

Virtual Call Center

June 01, 2012

Answering the Age-Old Question: 'Why Do People Need to be In-Office to Help Customers Over the Phone?'

By Allison Boccamazzo

Content Producer

Attention business managers: if you haven’t heard by now then you surely need to listen up, because one thing has been made stone cold clear; traditional businesses need to adapt to competing in the virtual world. If you don’t, you might as well say adios and risk obsolescence. If you need more assurance of this pressing point, just take the recent struggles of brick and mortar retailers such as Borders and Blockbuster as a cautionary tale of the dangerous, immeasurable power of the Internet.

Virtual call centers are certainly not something new; having been on the market for approximately 20 years, it was initially invented to shed light on the idea of efficiently and successfully bringing the work to the people, not vice versa. Having truly redefined the traditional, hum-drum structure and eliminating most of the fixed costs associated with such centers, home-based contact centers allowed companies to revolutionize like never before by permitting companies to hire the most qualified agents, regardless of where he or she lived or was located.

Of course, with new additions come new speculations and disapprovals. Many executives began to become uncomfortable with monitoring and evaluating agents remotely, as they believed it wouldn’t be as effective when compared to on-site agents. Unbeknownst to us at the time, a rapidly approaching economical crash would force enterprises to opt for outsource customer care via offshore facilities. But, when the time came for companies to bring their services back onshore, they didn’t want to revisit the expensive, traditional B&M model, as the high fixed costs of these kinds of centers is what made them move offshore to begin with.

Thankfully, the virtual, at-home call center model has continued to develop and grow, and for as much as it expands, it uses the latest technology to create distance-based training programs and meet the highest data security standards. With a proven 25 percent annual increase of leading outsourced, at-home companies and predictions of outsourced home agents doubling between 2011 and 2015, some even go so far to say it has experienced an “explosive” growth. This truly began shedding light on the question buzzing about: why can’t someone serve customers remotely over the phone?

So if you haven’t taken a look into making this vital, determining decision, don’t wait any further. Now’s the time to do so!